Unfortunately, we have the same income and food distribution problems Amartya Sen talks about right here in the U.S. Yesterday's Washington Post documented one woman's struggle to live on Food Stamps, a program which is not indexed to inflation and which has become a political football in this year's farm bill. Congress just enacted that bill, H.R.2419, over President Bush's veto. It arrested the steady decline in Food Stamps, but it didn't restore any of the lost value of Food Stamps since the 1996 and subsequent cuts under Presidents Clinton and Bush 43. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities documented the decline on May 23rd.

Most Americans assume there's plenty of food for everyone here, but if you've ever ventured into a food bank, a homeless shelter, or an elementary school in a poor neighborhood, you'll quickly find otherwise. America's Second Harvest documented the increased demand for and reduced supply of donated food in the U.S. on May 12th.

This is personal for me. Once every week for the last four years, when school is in session, I read over lunch to an inner city youth at Marie Reed Learning Center, one of D.C.'s poorest schools. The Everybody Wins! reading program has been a great success. The kids are reading much better. The hard part is watching what passes for lunch at a Title I school. On a good day, a slice of pizza or chicken nuggets with one packet of barbecue sauce is all that is eaten. What passes for a vegetable is usually inedible. Sometime a partially green orange is eaten, but the apples are sour and barely edible. On a bad day, the stench of the sauce on what passes for a small piece of meat is sickening. I don't eat until after I get home to avoid throwing up in front of my student. He used to be the "Tiny Tim" of the school, struggling with the effects of muscular distrophy, until it forced him to be permanently wheelchair bound. Now he's seriously overweight, in part because of the awful diet he eats at school.

My formerly homeless friend, Michael, lives on Food Stamps. They invariably run out before the end of the month, and he's treated almost like a criminal by the social workers who watch the program like a hawk. They don't see how badly he suffers from seizures, despite the best medications. He worked for years until his seizures prevented him. The system forced him onto the streets for over 10 years. How he survived that, I'll never know. Fortunately for Michael, his deep personal faith, clean living, and calm forgiving manner have attracted many friends who help him live a better life. I'm looking forward to Saturday night, when Michael will throw a party for his friends. It gives me hope to see that at least one poor man can survive well in this country.